What's not working

Oakland's trashy underbelly: Tidewater Avenue is one of those streets in East Oakland that leaves even this former cabdriver wondering if he is lost. It's a dead-end road that intersects High Street near the bridge into Alameda and traverses an industrial zone that includes two trucking companies, a construction supply firm and warehouses. At night, it's dark and empty, which may be the reason illegal dumpers leave so much trash there. Tidewater has become known among local bicycle riders because it includes a back entrance into Martin Luther King Regional Shoreline accessible only to cyclists and pedestrians. After we wrote about the repair work at that entrance, Andy Peralta called us and asked, "How could you ride your bike on Tidewater and not notice that the street is filthy, (it) has potholes that look like craters and there are always piles of trash there? Has ChronWatch gone soft?" No, we still know a story when we see it; we noticed Tidewater problems on our visits. We saw that the trash piles have grown since Christmas. In a half-mile stretch, Tidewater embodies many of the gritty urban woes - trash, graffiti, abandoned cars, bad streets - that Oakland has tried to eliminate in an effort to change its image in the past decade. We sent photos of the trash, potholes and some graffiti to Oakland's Public Works Agency, where many people were on vacation last week. They promised to start work there as soon as possible.